Cobra Bio-Manufacturing PLC
19 April 2004


For Immediate Release                                            19 April, 2004



                           Cobra Biomanufacturing Plc



           COBRA AWARDED US PATENT FOR MANUFACTURE OF BIOPHARMACEUTICALS



Keele, UK: Cobra Biomanufacturing plc (AIM: CBF), the international manufacturer
of biopharmaceuticals, today announces the award of a US patent covering the
RiboCLEAR system of novel cell lines engineered specifically for the manufacture
of biopharmaceuticals at lower cost and higher quality.

The US Patents and Trademarks Office has issued Notice of Allowance to Cobra for
US Patent Application 09/291,347, a patent entitled purification of cellular
components that are substantially RNA free. Formal issuing of the patent under
US patent law will follow the Notice.

RiboCLEAR is a microbial cell line specifically designed for the manufacture of
biopharmaceuticals, sales in this sector of the pharmaceutical industry
currently exceeding $45 billion dollars per annum. The strains covered by the
invention produce products that are free of a contaminant called RNA, a
potentially dangerous and troublesome contaminant that is difficult to remove
from such biopharmaceutical products such as plasmid DNA and some protein
products.

RiboCLEAR has a distinctive advantage in that  processing is simplified and
avoids the alternative, use of the very expensive raw material, ribonuclease
(which degrades RNA). As ribonuclease is derived from cattle, pharmaceutical
products produced using this additive carry a risk of contamination with BSE and
such manufacturing processes are not acceptable in today's regulatory climate.
RiboCLEAR strains avoid the use of such enzymes and therefore produce safer
products of higher quality and at lower cost.



David Thatcher, Chief Executive of Cobra, said:

"Along with our ORT and ORT-VAC technology, grant of this patent validates
Cobra's innovative research into the development of manufacturing solutions
which reduce the cost of manufacture and increases the quality assurance of our
customers products."



                                    - ENDS -

For further information please contact:


David Thatcher, Chief Executive Officer   Cobra Biomanufacturing        + 44 (0) 1782 714 181

Mark Court/Rebecca Skye Dietrich          Buchanan Communications       + 44 (0) 207 466 5000



Notes to Editors



Cobra Biomanufacturing Plc is a leading international manufacturer of
biopharmaceuticals to the lifescience industry. Founded in 1992, Cobra provides
innovative manufacturing solutions to the biopharmaceutical industry covering
recombinant protein, , virus, cellular therapeutics and DNA. Cobra was the first
company to develop GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) standard DNA manufacture in
Europe, with specific expertise in DNA medicines. A range of unique, patented
technologies, underpins this revenue generating business.



Cobra floated on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange
in June 2002 raising #7 million and raised a further #5.25 million in May 2003
in order to further expand capacity in Oxford UK.



RiboCLEAR Technology is a way of creating totally stable genetically engineered
strains that produce biopharmaceutical products, which are essentially RNA free.
RNA is a nucleic acid which is found in the cells used to manufacture
biopharmaceuticals. RNA encodes genetic information and therefore is potentially
a dangerous contaminant in injectable biopharmaceuticals. The regulatory
authorities therefore tightly control levels of RNA contamination. RiboCLEAR
microorganisms are engineered to co-produce the enzyme bovine ribonuclease which
degrades RNA rapidly. In the past a number of processes such as those for the
manufacture of plasmid DNA have incorporated a step that involves the addition
of bovine ribonuclease. The major disadvantage of this step is the expense of
the enzyme, currently the enzyme has to be obtained from certified BSE free
Australasian herds and the stance of the regulatory authorities which currently
discourages the use of all cattle products in injectable biopharmaceuticals.
Normally expression of ribonuclease is toxic to the cell. Cobra's molecular
biologists have found a method to induce accumulation of the enzyme in the cell
wall where it is sequestered from the rest of the cell during the growth phase
and released during subsequent processing to RNA.



ORT(R) Technology is a way of creating totally stable genetically engineered
strains of micro-organisms without the use of antibiotics or antibiotic genes.
Other technologies rely on either integrating the synthetic gene(s) into the
bacterial chromosome or using antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes to
amplify replicating mini-chromosomes (called plasmids) containing the new genes.
In the vaccine field it has been known for 10 years that the former approach
leads to poor strain productivity and the latter to strain instability. Use of
antibiotics also creates the risk of passing on the antibiotic resistance genes
to pathogens in the environment. Such events have occurred naturally to create
MRSA super bug strains so ORT(R) strains are inherently safer for patients.
ORT(R) technology avoids these problems.



ORT-VAC Technology harnesses the advantages of conventional genetic engineering
with the safer ORT(R) strain stabilisation technology. ORT-VAC allows rapid and
simple construction of bacterial vaccine strains, capable of expressing massive
quantities of synthetic antigenic proteins that can lead to protection against
disease without the fear of creating antibiotic resistant strains which might be
difficult to manage clinically. ORT-VAC technology can potentially be used to
protect both against common infectious diseases such as meningitis, new diseases
such as SARS, old diseases posing a new threat such as those which could be used
by terrorists and also cancer.



Statements contained within this press release may contain forward-looking
comments which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to
vary from those contained in the forward-looking statements.  In some cases, you
can identify such forward-looking statements by terminology such as 'may', '
will', 'could', 'forecasts', 'expects', 'plans', 'anticipates', 'believes', '
estimates', 'predicts', 'potential', or 'continue'.  Predictions and
forward-looking references in this press release are subject to the satisfactory
progress of research, which is, by nature, unpredictable. Forward projections
reflect management's best estimates based on information available at the time
of issue.


                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END

NRABRGDSXBBGGSL